The Club Dumas

better days, lined up on their cedarwood shelves.... I managed to collect five thousand of them. These are the survivors.”

Corso put his canvas bag on the floor and went over to the books. His fingers itched instinctively. It was a magnificent sight. He adjusted his glasses and immediately saw a 1588 first-edition Vasari in quarto, and a sixteenth-century Tractatus by Berengario de Carpi bound in parchment.

“I would never have dreamed that the Fargas collection, listed in all the bibliographies, was kept like this. Piled on the floor against the wall, in an empty house ...”

“That’s life, my friend. But I have to say, in my defense, that they are all in immaculate condition. I clean them and make sure they’re aired. I check that insects or rodents don’t get at them, and that they’re protected against light, heat, and moisture. In fact I do nothing else all day.” “What happened to the rest?”

Fargas looked toward the window, asking himself the same question. He frowned. “You can imagine,” he answered, and he looked a very unhappy man when he turned back to Corso. “Apart from the house, a few pieces of furniture, and my fa­ther’s library, I inherited nothing but debts. Whenever I got any money, I invested it in books. When my savings dwindled, I got rid of everything else—pictures, furniture, china. I think you understand what it is to be a passionate collector of books.’ But I’m pathologically obsessed. I suffered atrociously just at the thought of breaking up my collection.” “I’ve known people like that.”

“Really?” Fargas regarded him, interested. “I still doubt you can really imagine what it’s like. I used to get up at night and wander about like a lost soul looking at my books. I’d talk to them and stroke their spines, swearing I’d always take care of them.... But none of it was any use. One day I made my decision: to sacrifice most of the books and keep only the most cherished, valuable ones. Neither you nor anyone will ever un­derstand how that felt, letting the vultures pick over my collection.”

“I can imagine,” said Corso, who wouldn’t have minded in the least joining in the feast.

“Can you? I don’t think so. Not in a million years. Separating them took me two months. Sixty-one days of agony, and an attack of fever that almost killed me. At last, people took them away, and I thought I would go mad. I remember it as if it were yesterday, although it was twelve years ago.” “And now?”

Fargas held up the empty glass as if it were a symbol. “For some time now I’ve had to resort to selling my books again. Not that I need very much. Once a week someone comes in to clean, and I get my food brought from the village. Almost all the money goes to pay the state taxes for the house.”

He pronounced state as if he’d said vermin. Corso looked sympathetic, glancing again at the bare walls. “You could sell it.”

“Yes,” Fargas agreed indifferently. “There are things you can’t understand.”

Corso bent to pick up a folio bound in parchment and leafed through it with interest. De Symmetria by Dtirer, Paris 1557, reprinting of the first Nuremberg edition in Latin. In good condition, with wide margins. Flavio La Ponte would have gone wild over it. Anybody would have gone wild over it. “How often do you have to sell books?” “Two or three a year is enough. After going over and over them, I choose one book to sell. That’s the ceremony I was referring to when I answered the door. I have a buyer, a com­patriot of yours. He comes here a couple of times a year.” “Do I know him?” asked Corso.

“I have no idea,” answered Fargas, not supplying a name. “In fact I’m expecting him any day now. When you arrived, I was getting ready to choose a victim....” He made a guillotine movement with one of his slender hands, still smiling wearily. “The one that must die in order for the others to stay together.”

Corso looked up at the ceiling, drawing the inevitable par­allel. Abraham, a deep crack across his face, was making visible efforts to free the hand in which he held the knife. The angel was holding on to it firmly with one hand and severely repri­manding the patriarch with the other. Beneath the blade, his head resting on a stone, Isaac waited, resigned to his fate. He was blond with pink cheeks, like an ancient Greek youth who never said no. Beyond him a sheep was tangled up in brambles, and Corso mentally voted for the sheep to be spared.

“I suppose you have no other choice,” he said, looking at Fargas.

“If there was one, I would have found it.” Fargas smiled bitterly. “But the lion demands his share, and the sharks smell the bait. Unfortunately there aren’t any people left like the Comte d’Artois, who was king of France. Do you know the story? The old Marquis de Paulmy, who owned sixty thousand books, went bankrupt. To escape his creditors he sold his col­lection to the Comte d’Artois. But the Count stipulated that the old man should keep them until his death. In that way Paulmy used the money to buy more books and extend the collection, even though it was no longer his....”

He had put his hands in his pockets and was limping up and down along the books, examining each one, like a shabby, gaunt Montgomery inspecting his troops at El Alamein.

“Sometimes I don’t even touch them or open them.” He stopped and leaned over to straighten a book in its row, on the old rug. “All I do is dust them and stare at them for hours. I know what lies inside each binding, down to the last detail. Look at this one: De revolutionis celestium, Nicholas Copernicus. Second edition, Basle, 1566. A mere trifle, don’t you think? Like the Vulgata Clementina to your right, between the six volumes of the Polyglot by your compatriot Cisneros, and the Nuremberg Cronicarwn. And look at the strange folio over there: Praxis criminis persequendi by Simon de Colines, 1541. Or that monastic binding with four raised bands and bosses that you see there. Do you know what’s inside? The Golden Legend by Jacobo de la Voragine, Basle, 1493, printed by Nicolas Kesler.”

Corso leafed through The Golden Legend, It was a magnif­icent edition, also with very wide margins. He put it back care­fully. Then he stood up, wiping his glasses with his handker­chief. It would have made the coolest of men break out in a sweat.

“You must be crazy. If you sold all this, you wouldn’t have any money problems.”

“I know.” Fargas was leaning over to adjust the position of the book imperceptibly. “But if I sold them all, I’d have no reason to go on living. So I wouldn’t care if I had money prob­lems or not.”

Corso pointed at a row of books in very bad condition. There were several incunabula and manuscripts. Judging from the bindings, none dated from later than the seventeenth century. “You have a great many old editions of chivalric novels.” “Yes. Inherited from my father. His obsession was acquiring the ninety-five books of Don Quixote’s collection, in particular those mentioned in the priest’s expurgation. He also left me that strange Quixote that you see there, next to the first edition of Os Lusiadas. It’s a 1789 Ibarra in four volumes. In addition to the corresponding illustrations, it is enriched with others printed in England in the first half of the eighteenth century, six wash drawings and a facsimile of Cervantes’s birth certif­icate printed on vellum. To each his own obsessions. In the case of my father, a diplomat who lived for many years in Spain, it was Cervantes. In some people it’s a mania. They won’t accept restoration work, even if it’s invisible, or they won’t buy a book numbered over fifty.... My passion, as you must have noticed, was uncut books. I scoured auctions and bookshops, ruler in hand, and I went weak in the knees if I found one that was intact, that hadn’t been plowed. Have you read Nodier’s bur­lesque tale about the book collector? The same happened to me. I’d have happily shot any bookbinder who’d been too free with the guillotine. I was in ecstasy if I discovered an edition with margins two millimeters wider than those described in the ca­nonical bibliographies.” “I would be too.”

“Congratulations, then. Welcome to the brotherhood.” “Not so fast. My interest is financial rather than aesthetic in nature.”

“Never mind. I like you. I believe that when it comes to books, conventional morality doesn’t exist.” He was at the other end of the room but bent his head toward Corso confidingly. “Do you know something? You Spaniards have a story about a bookseller in Barcelona who committed murder. Well, I too would be capable of killing for a book.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s how it starts. Murder doesn’t seem like a big deal, but then you end up lying, voting in elections, things like that.”

“Even selling your own books.”

“Even that.”

Fargas shook his head sadly. He stood still a moment, frown­ing. Then he studied Corso closely for some time.

“Which brings us,” he said at last, “to the business I was engaged in when you rang at the door.... Every time I have to address the problem, I feel like a priest renouncing his faith. Are you surprised that I should think of this as a sacrilege?”